Professional Management and Disasters

What do you have to learn to be a crisis manager? The field of crisis and disaster management employs a variety of different qualifications, may it be engineers, health care professionals, fire-, police-, and rescue officers, or others. Despite the career paths in specific organisations there is only little common understanding what qualifies a crisis manager. In addition professional management needs not only qualified staff but also efficient methods and management concepts. Assuming that other disciplines like business- and project management have to deal with complex projects on a daily base, it could be worth to evaluate if some methods and concepts can be transferred to crisis management.Aim: To see what is available and what others do: A short synopsis of concepts for individual certification and standardisation of management competencies. Methods: The concept of a Certified Emergency Manager (CEM) as awarded by the International Association of Emergency Managers (IAEM) is outlined to demonstrate how staff’s qualifications in such a diverse field can be assessed. In comparison the IPMA Competence Baseline (ICB) for Project Management is summarised to identify elements with high relevance for crisis management. Finally the Project Roadmap, a community based knowledge base, is introduced to give an impression of the variety of available methods. Conclusion: Crisis management is evolving as professional management discipline. This professionalization will require standards in personal qualification and methods. Some concepts specifically designed for crisis management already exist and are worth considering, for instance the CEM. Also other disciplines, like project management, offer many methods that are likely to be adaptable for crisis and disaster management

Keywords:

crisis management , CEM , IAEM